Josh Marshall has the nub of it: the Bush/Rove/Norquist/Abramoff/DeLay operation is fundamentally a political money machine, and all the financial scandals have their common root in that simple fact. The right comparison in that regard isn't to Nixon, but to the Mark Hanna machine of the Gilded Age.
That's only half the story, though. The other half is the intention of the current wrecking crew to intimidate, discredit, or destroy every institution that might possibly stand in the way of the permanent consolidation of power by the new oligarchy: the Democratic party, labor unions, trial lawyers, the courts, the universities, the mainstream media, and any individual civil servant or officer (e.g., Gen. Eric Shinseki, Larry Greenfeld of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bunny Greenhouse of the Corps of Engineers) or Executive-branch agency (e.g., the State Department, the CIA) that displays allegiance to the nation rather than the oligarchs.
That intention to brook no opposition is the deeper significace of the "K Street Project," the well-publicized attempt to make Democratic lobbyists unemployable by threatening their clients with legislative reprisal.
In this context, the belief that the oligarchs' imagination might extend to he systematic miscounting of unauditable electronic votes doesn't seem quite as far-fetched as it otherwise might.
[...]consider the fact that Jack Abramoff's partner seems to have hired a Gotti-connected hit man to bump off a business rival, and that a senior federal prosecutor who got too close to Abramoff suddenly found himself demoted and forbidden to work on corruption cases.
Take all of that in context with the previous posts I have made.
- The K-Street Project.
- David Safavian.
- Congress is a cesspool spewing money.
- Republicans and ARMPAC.
- Countering the right-wing political machine.
- Indictments against AIPAC.
- Karl Rove.
There is a pattern of lawlessness, authortarianism and corruption here, and it is all wrapped in the Republican Party.
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